Joe and “Cookie” Gonzalez
I am a retired police officer by profession. I was born in Harlingen, Texas. Our family migrated to West Texas in the early 1960s. As a preteen, I shared time with my two older brothers selling popcorn up and down the aisles inside a movie theater back in Harlingen. When we grew up, we went to work in the cotton fields hoeing weeds during the summers and picking cotton in the fall. We were back in the fields during the onion and cabbage harvest season in the early frosty mornings of fall in order to help our parents put food on the table. Back when one could earn twenty-five or thirty cents an hour, working ten-hour days in the hot summer sun, was no fun. But it meant growing up, feeling grateful for what God gave us and sleeping with a full stomach. At times, it was fun because it also meant making new friends who were doing the same thing for their parents. It was an honest way to survive poverty
Thanks to our parents, who always wanted us to finish high school, we all graduated high school at New Deal ISD, which is in Lubbock County, Texas. I attended Texas Tech University but eventually, dropped out in order to marry my high school sweetheart. Recently celebrating fifty years of marriage, I still love my beautiful wife with all my heart. Orelia is still the apple of my eye. She is still my best friend and my number one fan, and my life is complete having her at my side. My jobs took me from working the fields, working at a slaughterhouse, a meat market, a warehouse, and driving the big rigs. From there, I went to work for the Lubbock Police Department as a street cop until retirement.
During my many years of working, many countless and unforgettable friends have touched my life. The fact that friendships make a huge part of our lives is what inspired me to write this book about dreams, friends, and what they do to pass the time. We have all had those types of friends.